Visitors to the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show may have experienced deja vu as companies such as Samsung heralded a coming revolution that would merge the experiences of watching television and using the Internet.
If it sounds familiar, it should _ Microsoft banked heavily on this concept more than 10 years ago when it acquired the WebTV domain, and American Online jumped on the bandwagon shortly thereafter.
WebTV and AOLTV were supposed to bring the Internet to the masses by making it available at a lower price point _ WebTV sets were priced around $300, plus a $20 monthly subscription fee _ and in a more user-friendly format. The idea seemed to be that the good old familiar television set would be more accessible than the scary new desktop PC.
Both endeavors are now widely viewed as flops, having failed to attract enough subscribers to give the idea any real momentum. But the idea of Internet TV gets trotted out every so often as the golden ticket for an industry reliant on innovation.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Samsung's executive vice president of marketing, Tim Baxter, said his company and others like it were poised to "forever change the passive interaction we've had with our TVs," according to Slate.com's Farhad Manjoo.
This sounds an awful lot like what AOL's Barry Schuler said years ago as his company prepared to launch its ill-fated AOLTV service.
"This is the beginning of a fundamental change in television," Schuler told Business Week in 2000. Or, given the lackluster response to the service, perhaps not.
Baxter and others no doubt hope that interactive TV will rise from the ashes to shore up foundering tech sales figures, but there are plenty of skeptics who disagree. In a recent column for the Christian Science Monitor, Tom Regan compared interactive TV to cold fusion: "People will tell you that it's a great idea and will revolutionize society as we know it. But no one has been able to do it, regardless of how many times they've tried."
So what's new this time around? First of all, it's hard to deny that consumers have grown more accustomed to mixing media.
"Many consumers of online social media regularly find themselves in front of the TV, laptop flipped open, responding to e-mails, updating social network profiles, or finishing work or studies," wrote Douglas MacMillan in a Jan. 11 Business Week article.
Yahoo's new TV Widget line of hardware and software, which debuted at the CES, is designed to add interactivity to the television-watching experience. MacMillan argues that users already accustomed to multitasking might appreciate the help these Widgets will offer.
The Internet's growth offers another reason interactive TV might have a better shot today. When Microsoft bought WebTV in 1997, the Internet was still something of a novelty. Today it's a ubiquitous part of professional and personal life for young and old alike.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that, in 2005, more than two-thirds of American adults use the Internet, and people are using it for a wider variety of activities. In theory, this should mean that people will be more receptive to Internet content on their TV screens.
Manjoo, Regan and others doubt this theory, however, for a variety of reasons. As Manjoo points out, "Passivity is television's main feature; we love it precisely because it asks so little of us."
Regan argues that television's strength is its status as what he calls a "one to many" medium. "When a show is on the tube, the entire family can sit and watch. But when I'm online, whether checking e-mail or reading the news, I want to do it on my own," Regan wrote.
Regardless of philosophical differences about the viewing experience, the bottom line in all of this is cost. Viewers who have recently upgraded to digital-ready TVs are unlikely to turn around and shell out for a brand-new Internet-capable set. Those who do take the plunge may be disappointed by what they find there.
Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe test-drove an Internet-enabled Sharp TV at the CES, but found it didn't support any online video or audio _ "just still images and a few headlines." Shades of 1997, indeed.
TVs that do support video, such as a Bravia set Bray tried out, are hindered by the fact that few online videos are available in high-definition.
While much of the talk at the CES may have sounded fanciful, such as 3D television, the stakes are high. Talk of the death of television continues as prime-time television viewership steadily drops. It's not hard to understand why people in the TV business are trying to lure viewers away from their computers by offering them Internet on TV. Whether it will work this time around remains to be seen.
Daily Star Community Editor Emily Popek is chronicling her cable-free lifestyle in "TV 2.0," a weekly column.
